


I Don't Wanna Lose It, I'm Not Getting Through This

by realityisiron



Series: Train Wreck [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Shiro (Voltron) Angst, light Violence, shiro angst, this will make more sense if you read the others first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 03:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11706129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realityisiron/pseuds/realityisiron
Summary: He had done the math – so simple, in the end.Didn’t mean he liked the answer.“I can’t lose this.” The arm.- - - - -After the battle against Zarkon, Shiro doesn't know where he wakes up.





	I Don't Wanna Lose It, I'm Not Getting Through This

**Author's Note:**

> The part four I didn't mean to write but now exists. Whoops.
> 
> Jeez, it's tough making myself write less than 1000 words each time. I... think it's good for me? Like vegetables?
> 
> Listen to James Arthur's "Trainwreck" when you read just cause... yeah, that song inspired this whole series and I shamelessly listened to it on repeat when writing all the parts.

“Ssssshhiro.”

Everything was hot and dark in his head, pounding.

Beyond his eyelids, a snake was waiting for him.

No, no that wasn’t right. Snakes didn’t have so many arms – didn’t have any – but this one had four. Four arms beneath white and red scales (a pang of longing echoed in his chest; he remembered koi fish swimming, bursts of red on pearl white). The ache in his chest felt familiar, like he’d seen this alien and ached before.

_Why?_

She had dark green eyes – four – and milky fangs that a long tongue flickered between as she spoke, a soft and calming hiss.

“Ssssshhiro. I am Yassuil. Do you remember?” He didn’t. Yassuil said nothing else; just returned to his wounds, clawed fingers smoothly stitching skin, impossibly gentle, the stitches tight and jagged ( _familiar_ ). He should’ve panicked. Should’ve wondered why he was bleeding out on a floating crag of mottled rock, tucked inside a bubble of artificial atmosphere. Should’ve wondered where the Black Lion was, where his fellow Paladins were. Instead he faded in and out, sometimes waking to her murmuring, a lullaby to his fuzzy senses.

 

He woke again to shouts from yell-worn throats. His helmet was elsewhere, their words just clicks and growls and trills without it. But he didn’t need to translate. Claws wrapped around him, hands of strangers all just shadows and colors. Shiro’s world was still upside down and inside out; he’d lost so much blood – but he knew appraising gazes. The Golden Boy of the Garrison had felt his fair share. Fingers ran over the ridge of leathery scars and metal – druid malice meeting painfully ordinary flesh, danced along seams and grooves; searching.

Something stretched tight inside him, taut and burning. Claws had him pinned, but different hands were wrenching the arm away (and something else inside him, a spider web of fragile things he didn’t know the names for but so intimately recognized).

So deep.

The arm ran so much deeper than he’d realized.

Something snapped and someone yanked-

The wrenching stopped.

And Shiro, for all that his mind couldn’t keep up with what was going on, for all that everything was hazy, knew life was fading fast between his cold Galra fingers, an alien heart beating out its final moments.

His exhilaration didn’t care – the pure rush of it all. He tore through a spine and a throat with a flash of purple before Yassuil grabbed him. She raced for a tiny ship, a shred of mercy wrapped around tiny engines, other scarred aliens hobbling and limping on board (there were others? Was he not the only one she was looking after? _How did I not notice?_ ). Her fangs sunk into his neck as he thrashed.

He went heavy in her arms, the world quiet, his scar tissue a hot, angry red around the metal of the arm’s bicep. Something in her bite…

He was so… so tired.

 

Shiro woke on another rock. Another bubble of pretend atmosphere. Yassuil checked him after cutting away the deadened flesh of an alien’s hands. The tips and palms had been burned trying to defend against the intruders.

“Many are in no shape to fight. Those that are have other skillsets.”

One such alien gave a shriek of alarm.

Another attack, but this time they shot a heavy net towards Shiro.

God damned reflexes – Shiro’s were sluggish still. He almost didn’t make it to the ship in time.

 

“Who are they?” Shiro could have been asking about the other wounded aliens, but Yassuil knew he wasn’t.

Who were their attackers?

She spat into her palms and rubbed it into the metal and flesh seam. It made the burning pause – the fleeting relief so familiar. ( _Why?_ ) “Ssscavengerss. Piratess.”

“What do they want?”

Her fingers skimmed the crackling fist. “Druid work is rare.”

 

There was never time for his muscles to settle and mend. The pirates appeared every time without fail. “Were you attacked before I showed up?”

Yassuil scowled. “No.”

 

“If I didn’t have the arm…” Her eyes shot to his, waiting.

But he didn’t ask.

He knew the answer.

If he didn’t have it, there would be nothing for the scavengers to want.

 

“Yassuil, if we left the system-“

“I will not leave people who need me.”

 

He had done the math – so simple, in the end.

Didn’t mean he liked the answer.

“I can’t lose this.” The arm.

“You’ve lossst it before.” Unhelpful, snark Shiro didn’t need as he focused on his breathing. If he focused on the ins and the outs of the air in his lungs he wouldn’t have to think about the panic coming in, the logic going out, the dark thoughts making room in his head, the nicer truths slipping out into a void. “That’sss Galra. There could be trackersss. Brainwassh coding. A ttiiicking bomb.”

“I can’t lose this,” he repeated, a stubborn record – but not broken, god let someone show him that he wasn’t broken.

“Your bayard waitsss for you, a new arm can be built. Why not?”

“I can’t-“

“Losse it. That isss no ansswer.”

A beat of silence.

“It’sss much harder to call yourself a monsster when the real monssters’ handiwork iss gone.”

“You don’t know what makes me a monster.”

“Maybe not. But there were monsterss and there wasss the Champion-“ a shock of fear raced through his chest – she had been a prisoner? She had known him when- “and there were the prissoners the Champion protected. Ssssome of us tried to repay him.” A scaled finger trailed over a scar – one that arced along his ribs, a scar he didn’t remember but knew he must’ve gotten in the name of Galra entertainment. The tight and jagged stitching…

“It was _you_.”

The Champion remembered the Medic.

 

Whatever his mental block, it wasn’t worth dying over. It took him the deaths of two injured aliens to see that. The arm had never felt so heavy, even when it was killing him.

“Take it away from me… Please.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know what I am. There's gonna be more of these, I can't lie to myself. In fact, I probably know how many more there will be, too. And as much as I personally like my OC, I have no intention of her having a big part in later installations of the series. She's just here for my purposes this time around.
> 
> Anyway, I haven't seen Voltron season 3 yet (I'm in Tokyo and my schedule is crazy, but soon, soooooon I will see it), but once I've seen it I'll be back to gushing about Voltron on this handy dandy [tumblr](https://realityisiron.tumblr.com/) thing. Feel free to come say hi!


End file.
